


Monopoly

by orphan_account



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 10:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7570072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This game is rigged,” Neku says, pointedly, not even looking at <i>who</i> he’s trying to accuse–</p><p><i>It’s Joshua.</i> Of course it’s Joshua. It’s always Joshua.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monopoly

He doesn’t know how it came to this, honestly.

Shiki is fighting Eri to give her Picadilly because that’s the only yellow area she doesn’t have, _please, Eri, I’ll give you Trafalgar?_

Neku is a fairly sure they started this game with an alliance, who knew when that fell apart. Perhaps some time between Beat somehow knowing _(and managed!)_ to get all the orange areas for a safe run and Neku being on the verge of Bankruptcy. He’s still floored that it turns out, Beat is very good at this game – or just has a considerable amount of luck, Neku can never be too sure when it comes to him – reigning in head pats from his little sister, their ever patient Banker, every time he sucks some money from one of his five currently attending friends.

Case in point, there are no friends on the Monopoly board.

“This game is rigged,” Neku says, pointedly, not even looking at _who_ he’s trying to accuse–

 _It’s Joshua._ Of course it’s Joshua. It’s always Joshua.

Joshua smiles, one palm upturned and all up in Neku’s face, wiggling his fingers. Neku almost feels like giving up his internal moral debate, stop weighing the possibility of crossing the line with what he wants to say, and embrace his inner heartless monster– in tribute to who he’s up against, by the way. He isn’t inherently a terrible human being; hanging out with Joshua constantly must have left some residual essence of _asshole_ sticking to him, surely.

 _‘That thing I said way back then near Hachiko?’_ he thinks, loudly, the git can probably hear him anyway. _’Yeah, I take it back, you’re not my friend on top of me never forgiving you. Fuck you.’_

“Oh, Neku,” Joshua coos, head tilted, his hair falling across his face. Neku wants to punch him already. “Don’t be a sore loser. My powers don’t extend to altering whole universes. I didn’t _make_ you fall on to my property every few turns and give all your money to me.”

Yes, but that doesn’t explain how Joshua makes a show of owning only the two dark blue areas, _the ones that have the lowest probability of someone landing on it,_ and _still_ somehow, some way, made Neku lose money with how he’s practically _magnetised_ to those two squares. It _has_ to break at least the concept of Math itself.

“It sounds even more like bullshit when you put it that way,” he sniffs, glaring full intensity while crouching protectively over his pitiful, thin stack of paper money. 

“ _Honestly._ You could ask Mr. H.”

“Sorry, Phones. Gotta side with Josh on this one. He can’t do that.” Mr. H helpfully shouts from the faraway land of the counter.

“See?” Smug. Full of himself. Irritating. Neku hates it when he’s wrong. “Now your money, please?”

Nose scrunched and still incredibly slighted, Neku slaps his fake cash onto Joshua’s hand. “Fine, but I still think you used underhanded tactics.”

“All that scorn over a board game. I thought better of you Neku.” Joshua giggles, licking a finger to count his (dirty) dosh, expertly flipping through them.

“I wouldn’t put it past you to predict the future or something. You’re good at that.” The argument’s just as good dead at this point, Neku just feels especially petulant.  
Just then, he feels a finger pressed onto his lips, in a split second he hopes, _hopes_ that it’s not the one that had been in contact with Joshua’s snake tongue. Eyes narrowed, brows furrowed, Neku gives Joshua a generous ten seconds before he bites his finger off.

“You may suck and Monopoly, but you still have monopoly over my heart, Neku,” Joshua says, batting his eyelashes.

\---------

Neku walks drags a sore foot behind him on the short, torturous walk from the table in the far corner of the café to the counter stools near the register. Hanekoma peers up from behind his shades, over the afternoon paper, and regards him with a sad smile.

“Sorry, Phones. He can’t manipulate space, either. I don’t know how you stepped on your own foot.”


End file.
